Tag Archives: Employment

If we sell something that is perfectly legal to give away and sex is not involved, is it still prostitution? That is the question I asked myself as I read an article on CNN’s Web site (see link below) that discussed some of the more questionable business practices taking place in China. Apparently, if you are Caucasian and willing to go to China, you can get a job standing around being, well, Caucasian. Chinese businesses are willing to pay fair-faced men and women to pretend to be foreign clients, business partners, oil tycoons and girlfriends, in their campaign to look more successful. To bolster “face.”

If one is well versed in the relevant literature, this story may come as little shock. Previous studies have addressed similar issues in China related to “westernization.” For example, Lindridge and Wang (2008) conducted a study of young women in Shanghai who report significant pressure from family to seek plastic surgery to reflect the “new China:” a mix of old world hierarchies, western style, success and “perfection.” In comparison to plastic surgery, spinning lies about western connection by having John Smith walk around your business party looking Caucasian doesn’t seem all that bad. Does it?

Personally, I have no problem with men and women making an easy buck in this manner, or most manners for that matter. My only problem with the whole things is that these jobs are not open to a diverse pool of potential applicants, especially when our own country is going through a difficult recession. I think that African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and alike should have the same opportunities to sell themselves to Chinese business as Caucasian. It is just too bad that such an enterprise would never work here.

A recent poll by the New York Times and CBS has highlighted the link between being jobless and a number of mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Unemployment is undoubtedly linked to one’s self-esteem and personal happiness during the period of joblessness but how does unemployment affect people after they return to a job?

Most research on how people perceive their own well-being (subjective well-being) has suggested that people have a relatively stable baseline level of happiness, which, although it can be temporarily altered by a traumatic event, is unchanged in the long-run. However, according to work by Lucas and colleagues (2004), our set points of well-being can actually be changed permanently, at least in the case of unemployment. After conducting a 15-year longitudinal study, the authors found that periods of unemployment lowered people’s baseline levels of life satisfaction long after they returned to a job, even when controlling for income. In fact, the larger the drop in life satisfaction during unemployment, the more likely that one’s set points of happiness remain drastically lower than they were pre-unemployment, even many years later. Furthermore, the researchers suggest that those whose life satisfaction suffer greatest during unemployment are also more likely to face unemployment later in life.

So, not only does having lost your job hurt right now, being unemployed can alter your long-term life satisfaction; and a drastic drop in your long-term subjective well-being can lead to further incidents of unemployment.

With unemployment figures reaching new heights and markets conditions deteriorating, employers need to recruit the most talented employees if they are to maintain their competitive edge and have a workforce that reflects their consumer base. Arguably then, that means recruiting employees from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Overt discrimination of race, sexuality, disability, religion, age and gender is, of course, illegal and employers seem to be proactive in their attempts to eliminate barriers to recruitment, retention and progression. Yet the egalitarian discourses that employers draw upon in these practices, often account for less diverse workforces as a result of external forces e.g. particular groups do not tend to apply. However, these can often be caused by an organisation’s own internal discourses, which inadvertently deselect potential candidates with particular attributes and personalities e.g. advertising a vacancy in magazine targeted at younger people is unlikely to be seen by more mature candidates.

In a more challenging business environment, it may therefore, prove fruitful for employers to review their recruitment methods and dispositions.

Firstly it was bonus payments for bankers seen as largely responsible for the ‘credit crunch’, and then excessive expenses claims by members of parliament (MPs).

Although these activities were not necessarily illegal, the British public has been enthusiastically encouraged by the press to denounce them as immoral.

This common view that dubious morality is endemic amongst those in positions of power has been highlighted recently by the ironic election success of a Croatian politician with a campaign slogan of ‘All for me, nothing for you’.

From a psychological perspective, such beliefs illustrate the ultimate attribution error, where negative behaviours of individual members are seen as typical of an entire out-group.

On closer inspection, however, this simple moral dichotomy is more complex than it may first appear. For example, MP’s expenses have been likened to so-called ‘Spanish practices’, a derogatory British term that continues to be surprisingly widely-used despite its racist implications. Such practices are questionable non-contractual working arrangements that benefit the employee and have become accepted as normal over time. These typically occur within heavily unionised industries, and have previously been the subject of industrial disputes.

Rather ironically then, many of those claiming the moral high-ground in terms of MP’s expenses commonly take advantage of exactly the same kind of ‘unofficial benefits’, suggesting that morality is a somewhat flexible concept.